Twenty-one years ago Lloyd Kaufman and pals pooled enough dough together to make the feature that their new company Troma would forever be synonymous with, “The Toxic Avenger.” This little indie film spawned 3 sequels, a cartoon series, Halloween costumes, bubble gum cards, action figures and even an off-Broadway “Musikill.”
Here’s a quick recap for those who’ve been living under a toxic rock for the past 2 decades. Melvin, the town nerd and resident mop boy at the local Tromaville spa, is taunted daily by his peers. In an attempted escape from those who ridicule him, Melvin finds himself headfirst in a 55 gallon barrel drum of toxic waste. The sludge-like radiation transforms the 90 pound weakling into “The Toxic Avenger, the world-famous hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength!”
At this point Melvin, now known as Toxie, gallops about Tromaville cleaning up…err mopping up crime and finds love with a blind girl. How sweet. There’s gore galore, belly laughs by the tanker truck load, enough simulated sex and female nudity to satiate a “rain-coater” and not a damned bit of it’s meant to be taken seriously. Over the years Toxie has become a fairly inescapable piece of Americana that seems to continually rear its god-awfully mutated head.
This Golden Edition DVD comes loaded with extras including; The film in its original theatrical widescreen ratio of 1:85:1, commentary by the films director, cartoons, original shorts inspired by Toxie, trailers, deleted scenes and tons of interviews.
